Hi Craig,
> [Steve] >> I think the fact/value distinction is just to say that facts and >> values are different sorts of things. >Craig: > For Searle the Is-Ought gap is the same as the fact/value gap > & the descriptive/evaluative gap. Steve: I'n not sure what he means by saying that they are the same. Can you point me to his essay? I couldn't find it on the web anywhere. > > [Steve] >> Putnam is saying "so what?" We are never in that >> position of having a bunch of "is" premises and needing to derive our >> very first "ought." > Craig: > If this is right, Putnam misses the point. Steve: I can't see why this misses the point. If we are never in the position of trying to derive an ought from a list of ises, then why would it ever be important to say that it can or can't be done? Craig: Whether we NEED to or not, CAN we derive an "ought" from an "is"? There might be "oughts" which cannot be derived & others which can. Of the latter, CAN they only be derived from "is es". Steve: In this question about CANs and CAN'Ts, what is supposed to be preventing us from or allowing us to do something? Putnam would probably agree with Hume that reasoning from is to ought can't be done, but he might say (and I'm pretty sure Matt K and Rorty would say) that it is a matter of the norms of discourse rather than being a directive of Reason. The universe doesn't somehow prevent us from drawing is-to-ought conclusions. We prevent one another form doing so because we have found that such reasoning does not serve us well for our purposes. As Matt K said previously, to our modern ears it just sounds like a non sequitor to make the is-ought leap as in such attempted syllogisms as "we ought to rule in the future because we rule now and we always have ruled in th past." The aristocracy will have to give us a better argument than that, and the form such a better argument will need to take will need to presuppose not only some factual assertions but some agreement about what ought to be done under certain circumstances. However, as Horse's example shows, if two people actually didn't have any agreement whatsoever about what ought to happen or what the world ought to be like or what conclusions ought to follow from what premises there would be no hope for getting consensus through rational argumentation. In fact, if there were universal agreement that we should rule out arguments that attempt to move from a set of ises alone to one or more oughts, then we would have universal agreement on an ought premise that would make the whole question moot. Such universal agreement would mean (as Putnam and Pierce insist) that we are never in the position of agreeing only on a set of ises but not on any oughts. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
